James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

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All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

5 comments:

Once again -- as so many times in the past -- you seem to be peeking in my studio window. I'm working on a painting for a local publication. It's a view of a single figure striding in front of a mural in downtown Ann Arbor. After reading your post I made sure to position the guy so a plain, white part of the mural is behind his head. Thanks!

This brings up a question that has been plaguing me lately. I suppose it depends on the painting, but a what point should someone worry that an image may be too contrived? When should an artist be wary of having an image look like an exercise in technique rather than a moment captured? Or am I over-thinking this?

Chris, here's my view: All art is a contrivance, and the greatest contrivance of all is to make it appear natural, spontaneous, and unplanned.

In the act of painting, analysis has to be left outside the door, and intuition should guide the hand, but intuition is nothing but conscious understanding made automatic.

The reasons paintings fail in the way you describe, "as an exercise in technique" is that they have no genuinely felt emotion to express. All contrivance and technique should serve that goal and never be an end in itself. I realize all these points are debatable, but that's my sense of it.

I suspect that intuitive knowledge arises from the neurons in the heart. I'm told that the heart has more neurons than muscle cells.

Whether that's true or not, for me, somatically speaking, intuition arises in the heart, and not the head.

Heart-centered neurons account for what you're referring to when you say, "genuinely felt emotion." The work of any master is to have educated the head centered neurons enough to be able to accurately or appropriately respond to the information arising from the heart.